As 2012 began — and less than two months after winning control over the Spanish parliament — the right-leaning Partido Popular passed a controversial new anti-Internet-piracy law that will impose strict penalties on website owners who fail to remove copyrighted material from their sites. Sound familiar? The law, named after the former culture minister, Ángeles González-Sinde, gives the Spanish government nearly the same broad-ranging authority found in the equally controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) now wending its way through the U.S. Congress. Owners of the material can now complain to a government commission that can issue an order to block a website’s service.
To read this IEEE Spectrum report in full, see: spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/spain-declares-war-on-online-pirates